Nurturing Humanity: Essential Early Intervention for Children with Special Needs
by Cheryl Swope from Simply Classical
Parents often don't worry about early childhood development when everything seems fine. However, parents of children with special needs don't have that luxury. When a child shows signs of abnormal development, delayed speech or language, or struggles with normal growth, immediate attention is crucial. While some refer to it as early intervention, I prefer to call it essential intervention. We cannot wait.
Support for these children can include professional therapies, improved nutrition, and medical specialists. But much can also be done from the comfort, warmth, and security of our homes. As we seek necessary care, we must remember that the child is a human being with the need for love, respect, and moral order.
A more humane approach to early childhood special education starts with recognizing the child's inherent personhood. From conception onward, this child is a human being, fearfully and wonderfully made. They are given to us to nurture and love for as long as they live, far beyond the scope of measurable goals and finite objectives.
Engaging Your Child as an Individual
As we work on therapy goals and address physical needs, we must not neglect their humanity. Our earliest years should be filled with people who love us, discipline us, and whom we trust and respect in return. Children should not be placed in front of televisions, tablets, or phones as digital substitutes. Instead, they should be held and spoken to face-to-face by family and friends. They should hear stories, sing songs, and see beauty.
Children should be esteemed but not indulged. They should not throw their toys or food, scream, or whine. Instead, they should engage as they are engaged. When a toddler reaches out to share a soggy Cheerio, we can look them in the eye and say with appreciation, "Thank you." They should be taught and given the respect of good manners.
Engaging Your Child as a Family Member
Some speculate that the dramatic rise in childhood disorders like anxiety, ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder, and autism is partly due to the proliferation of devices that substitute human interaction, play, and quiet. Fragmenting a child from their family and their ability to play on their own will not serve them well.
What can a busy mom do? Engage the child by providing time to play with the family dog, a playmate, a neighbor, or as a mother's helper. Ask extended family, someone from church, or a college student to come over and play. This may or may not include implementing therapy exercises.
Example: When my son Michael was young, he needed physical therapy for low muscle tone and malformed legs. He couldn’t perform the exercises himself, and I struggled with time and patience. My dad came over to help. Instead of blandly counting "Push, Michael: 1, 2, 3," Grandpa turned it into a game: "Press the pedal to make the car go fast! Let's go! Vrooooooom." Michael pushed the imaginary pedal harder than ever, finding warmth, acceptance, and encouragement in my dad's face.
Engaging Your Child as a Cultural Citizen
Our children need responding, engaging human faces. We honor their personhood when we engage them with what is real. Let them hold or weigh real fruit at the grocery store, fold real socks together, and have real conversations. We can roll a ball back and forth, play "Follow the Leader," and let them become the leader. We teach them to say or sign "please" and "thank you" with respect and humility and encourage them to look for ways to help.
Introducing carefully selected books combined with simple lessons respects the young child, raises their tastes higher than they might naturally incline, and rewards efforts with greater competence in cognition, communication, and understanding.
When we provide therapies and medical care for our youngest children, we must also teach, nurture, and engage them. Their personhood grants them human needs: love, discipline, kindness, respect, gentleness, order, patience, joy, and kindness. Like all of us, our youngest children need the familiar faces of those who will be with them through the ups and downs, trials and resilience, sadness and joys of being loved and respected persons they were created to be.
Resources
Based on abilities, not chronological age, our Simply Classical ready-to-implement packages are themed with simple ways to include piety, preparation, and play within the therapeutic context of building skills, strengthening minds, and learning to engage with others.
Level A: Readiness, Rhythm, & Rhyme
Level B: Essentials, Etiquette, & Ear Training
Level C: Animals, Alphabet, & Aesop
Cheryl Swope is the author of Simply Classical: A Beautiful Education for Any Child and the creator of the Simply Classical Curriculum for Special Needs (Memoria Press), voted #1 for Special Learners. With a master's degree in special education, Cheryl homeschooled her adopted boy/girl twins from their earliest years through high school graduation. The family lives together in a quiet lake community in Missouri. For more articles like this, subscribe for free to the Simply Classical Journal, a print magazine arriving twice annually.
